DESCRIPTION: (taken from abstract) Nursing staff are significant participants in primary care consultations, particularly in gathering information about patients' reasons for seeking medical care and the background of patients' medical concerns. However, there is little research documenting nursing staff- patient interaction, its utility in gathering information, and its effects on outcomes such as subsequent physician communication with patients, patient satisfaction and quality of care. While current research on communication in primary care has documented the significance of physician-patient communication with respect to a wide range of physician and patient level outcomes, the contribution of nursing staff to these outcomes in the primary care context remains to be determined. In the contemporary context, where physicians may have less time to gather information about patients' health and relevant history taking may be abbreviated, this investigation of nursing staff-patient interaction is designed to document the nursing staff s contribution to the information gathering process, to determine the advantages and disadvantages of different ways of organizing information gathering and transmission within primary care teams, and to provide a basis for developing and testing ways in which nursing staff's involvement in taking patients histories can be improved or expanded This research will use 385 videotaped records of patient communication with nursing staff and physicians, together with survey data from participating patients and -nursing staff, to analyze the extent and determinants of patient communication with nursing staff, the recording of that information in the patient's chart, and its subsequent use in physician-patient communication. It will use this information to evaluate the contribution of nursing staff to patient care, and patient satisfaction with the primary care consultation. The knowledge gained from this study will provide a basis for the development of a training intervention which will improve information gathering, information transmission, and patient care in the primary care context.